Sounds German?: Popular Music in Postwar Germany at the Crossroads of the National and Transnational

Abstract

A musical undercurrent has long permeated German culture and intellectual life. For more than a century, theories and practices of folk, art, and classical music—variously understood both in their mutual interrelation and as entirely distinct—have anchored definitions of German national identity and the German cultural heritage. More recently, musical styles such as jazz, rock and roll, and hip-hop have also played a key role in the emergence of new social movements and alternative sensibilities in Germany. Indeed, since the end of World War II, popular music practices in Germany have been alternatively decried as drivers of Americanization and hailed as catalysts of technological development that prompt new ways of producing and consuming music to emerge.